The 'P' Problem

Following a vicious response on this week's letters page to this "mindless papistry", herewith the somewhat improbable Papist, Toby Young:

According to Sir Jonathan Porritt, the government’s green guru, couples who have more than two children are being ‘irresponsible’. ‘I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate,’ he says. He recommends contraception and abortion as methods of keeping the population down.

If only I had known this before I selfishly and thoughtlessly produced four children. The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Sir Jonathan is patron, points out that each baby born in Britain will end up burning the carbon equivalent of two-and-a-half acres of ‘old-growth oak woodland’. Why on earth didn’t Sir Jonathan speak up earlier? After all, who but a complete idiot would think that a child’s life is worth more than a few oak trees?

Some misguided critics of Sir Jonathan have suggested he should turn his attention to immigration if he is worried about Britain becoming overpopulated, but that won’t do. Even if we were to stop immigrants from entering this country, they would still exist. Worse, they would continue to breed. What is required is an overall reduction in the world’s population. As Sir Jonathan says, ‘We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.’

Now that this fearless Old Etonian has broached the topic, how should we deal with the ‘p’ problem? Contraception and abortion are all very well in enlightened countries like ours, but what of places like Pakistan? The country’s population currently stands at 172.8 million and is set climb to 208 million by 2020. Part of the problem is the infant mortality rate, which is pitifully low at 70 per thousand births. Can anything be done about this? Perhaps the Optimum Population Trust could launch a campaign for fewer midwives in Pakistan. Sir Jonathan is such an effective communicator, I am sure a few well-chosen words about the need to close maternity hospitals in cities like Karachi (pop. 12,461,423) would have a revolutionary effect.

Of course, simply increasing infant mortality won’t be enough to stop global warming. If Sir Jonathan is serious about halting population growth he should use his considerable rhetorical gifts to persuade Bill Gates to stop frittering away his fortune on trying to eradicate malaria. This disease claims the lives of 2,000 African children a day. That works out at 1.8 million acres of ‘old-growth oak woodland’ per year. Just think of the devastation if Gates succeeds.

In fact, a moment’s reflection reveals that the so-called progress the world has made since the Enlightenment is precisely what has landed us in this mess. The real villains here are people like Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming — simpletons who mistakenly imagined they were doing good by fighting diseases. If only these boobies had allowed Mother Nature to go about her work, Britain’s ancient woodlands would not be in such danger.

Luckily, all is not lost. As Pol Pot so ably demonstrated in Cambodia, the plague that is modern medicine can be eradicated if you put your mind to it — and when it comes to population growth, the results can be impressive. Thanks to Pot’s enlightened attitude to health care — he outlawed all medical drugs — over a million Cambodians died during his reign, many of them from treatable diseases. As Sir Jonathan says, the British government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illnesses.

Should these measures fail, I recently came across a very useful solution offered by a now-forgotten 18th-century writer called Jonathan Swift. In a pamphlet entitled ‘A Modest Proposal’, he makes a compelling case for eating children. This was in response to the Irish famine, but there is no reason to think it would not be equally effective in curbing overpopulation. Any British family found to have more than two children should be made to pay for their irresponsibility by handing over their offspring to the Optimum Population Trust to be turned into food. As Swift points out, ‘A young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.’ Sir Jonathan, I urge you to open a restaurant specialising in this cuisine. I promise to be first through the door and look forward to eating my two youngest children.